About Face - Softcover

Leon, Donna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0434019445 ISBN 13: 9780434019441

Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd, 2009

Synopsis

At a dinner party given by his parents-in-law, Commissario Brunetti meets Franca Marinello, the wife of a prosperous Venetian businessman. He's charmed - perhaps too charmed, suggests his wife Paola - by her love of Virgil and Cicero, but shocked by her appearance. A few days later, Brunetti is visited by Carabinieri Maggior Filippo Guarino from the nearby city of Marghera. As part of a wider investigation into Mafia takeovers of businesses in the region, Guarino wants information about the owner of a trucking company who was found murdered in his office. He believes the man's death is connected to the illegal transportation of refuse - and more sinister material - in his company's trucks. No stranger to mutual suspicion and competition between rival Italian police departments, Brunetti is nevertheless puzzled by the younger man's behaviour. Eventually Guarino agrees to email a photo of his suspect, but by the time the photograph arrives, he himself is dead. Was he killed because he got too close? And how is it that Franca Marinello is involved?

About this title

Review

Does the idea of a trip to Italy appeal to you? Do you want something a little less anodyne than strolling in the Mediterranean sun and consuming too much pasta and vino? Do you hanker, perhaps, to experience a touch of the corruption that most Italians wryly admit is endemic to much to their country’s superstructure? The American crime writer Donna Leon, then, is the perfect travel agent for you. She has given readers metaphorical passports to her adopted country for quite some time now, and her Commissario Brunetti novels are one of the glories of the current crime fiction scene. In her new book, About Face, a police associate of Brunetti, Guarino, leads the Commissario into a dangerous imbroglio: Mafia influence over businesses in the Marghera district is growing ever stronger, and when the MD of a trucking firm is killed in his offices, Brunetti's colleague concludes that the murder is tied into to the clandestine transportation of refuse. But things are complicated when Brunetti observes that Guarino is behaving in a very strange, atypical fashion – and the resourceful copper has multiple mysteries on his hands.

In the Brunetti universe, insidious double-dealing spreads its tendrils into every aspect of Italian society, but there is always a glimmer of hope, usually represented by Donna Leon’s intelligent and tenacious copper. Commissario Guido Brunetti is the man to root out the evils of his often benighted society. About Face is not, perhaps, Leon at her considerable best – the customary voltage is more muted -- but there’s more then enough Brunetti magic here to keep admirers happy and sated. --Barry Forshaw

Review

`Super sleuth Brunetti again patrols Venice's dark canal ways in this Italian crimefest. Once again, Brunetti proves he's more than a match for the local mob.'

About this edition

• Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0434019445
• ISBN 13: 9780434019441
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288